Date nuts

As if we needed more evidence that people who respond to phone polls are stunned and/or stupid.

Comments

[Michael Watkins]

Apparently people with brains are either a) not at home when the pollster calls, or b) living elsewhere, or c) have have been numbed or dumbed-down by their media or d) some mixture of all of the above.

Intellect can only be on the wane across our southern border - how else can one explain the popularity of Fox News or News Max. But hey, you can get Ann Coulter's book "Godless" for 23$ off the cover price!

http://newsmax.com/adv/godless/

Only $4.99; worth far less than that.

[Dana]

The disaffected, the infirm and the terminally lonely. That's the majority of the people who respond to polls. The first deludes themselves that it's a way to be heard, the second thinks it's a way to pass the time and the last is just glad of anyone to talk to.

On a related note - the percentage of Americans who believe Hussein had WMD is up in the past year.

[NPS]

Hearing that date(9/11)continuously is getting rather tiresome. It is driving me nucking futs!!!!!

[keeper]

“95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the attacks,”

And “48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll.”

My math says that 95% of people over 55 didn’t know the year--- by extrapolation I conclude that 95% of all polls do not tell me anything conclusive 95% of the time and that by the time I am 95 I will not know what a World Trade Centre was.

[Carla]

Ok.. I do not want to believe that people are that uniformed or uninterested, nor do I want to be so jaded that I believe only shut ins take part is surveys (I've been a shut in, I still knew what was going on outside!. Does anyone thing that maybe so few people have landlines anymore that the sample has got to be nothing but small and narrow on this? But if it's true, it's pretty damn crazy considering how 9/11/01 is part of the daily parlance! Betcha they know Paris Hilton gave up sex for a year, or Pam Anderson remarried Kid Rock! That's just the world we live in now. By the way, I don't think it's a particularly American phenonmenon. I'd like to see a similar poll here. Who knows how many Canadian soldiers have so far died in Afghanistan? Who can name the percentage of Canadians who voted in an election that reaped another minority government that is making questionable decisions 'cause people are too damn lazy to inform themselves to go to the polls? You'll forgive my leaps of thought but I don't think our country is any better off when it comes to what the majority of us can rhyme off for polling purposes.

[Elvid]

Nothing like a bit of subtle American bashing to keep the Canadian chattering classes convinced of their superiority in all areas. Same people who think that Rick Mercer's "Talking to Americans'" is high art.
Or maybe the answer is that , if you're pissed off with a pollster interrupting, you mess with their head by deliberately not stating your real opinions or knowledge.
Or maybe people everywhere are really stupid.

http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=1392

....Six in ten (60%) Canadians failed a three question quiz about three of Canada’s most famous Prime Ministers, including 34% who did not answer any of the questions correctly. On individual questions only 51% can name John A. Macdonald as Canada’s first Prime Minister, 49% know that it was Pierre Trudeau who invoked the War Measures Act and only one in five (19%) know that Wilfrid Laurier was Canada’s first francophone Prime Minister....

[jimmymack]

You don't see any difference between political events that happened nearly a century before the average Canadian was born, and a world-changing event that happened five years ago, Elvid?

[Mark Federman]

I think the survey results speak to a more important issue, one that is only rarely mentioned. The phrase "nine eleven" has become a cliché that has the effect of numbing awareness and shutting down critical thinking. In this sense, the term has taken on a set of connotations that are quite separate from the tragedy that occurred at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. People are not reminded, nor are mindful of, that tragedy and loss of life (let alone the loss of naive innocence, civil liberties, and the fundamental precepts of the U.S. Constitution). Instead, they have been deliberately and specifically conditioned to experience an almost Pavlovian submit-to-authority response at the incantation of "nine eleven."

Against that ground, the survey results are not surprising, nor do they indicate lack of intelligence on the part of those surveyed. The results do, however, demonstrate the incredible power to deliberately shape thought via massmedia bombardment.

[Bad Memory]

Maybe a percentage of the population just has trouble remembering numbers? I am one of those. I have to really work at remembering dates, phone numbers, measurements, quotes, etc. etc. etc. Any time I want to remember what year 9/11 happened, I have to look it up. Sorry, but I am not stupid, I just can't remember the year.

[Paul]

Is this not a reflection upon the theme of Orwell's 1984?

Orwell's point it accurately made... the sheeple don't know when the endless war started and it is irrelenvant when it did.

They just know that they are living in it. A phoney, endless war of fear.

In 1984 it was either against Eurasia or Eastasia - it didn't matter. It changed often - as part of the conspiracy against Big Brother and another reason to rally the troops against some phoney terrorist leader who, "mysteriously escaped and disappeared."

"The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."

The parallel to Osama, who too, mysteriously escaped and disappeared and now occassionaly shows up to offer renewed fear is chilling.

The sheeple buy this. Hence, Big Brother has accomplished his task.

The sheeple don't know the year when this GWOT, Global War on Terror started, they just go along with Fox News and CNN and believe the GWOT exists and they have fallen into line and given up their liberties for a phoney threat.

Interesting is that Greg Palast comments that 9/11, according to the Bush administration was about Muslims hating our freedoms, yet it is the U.S. citizens who are percieved as guilty and and must give up their freedom...

Life Imitates Art, the year of 9/11 was 1984

[Elvid]

I guess lots of others around the world have problems with recollecting some of the specifics of 9/11.

http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253

[aweb]

As a stats guy, I'll chime in and say : people lie. In larger numbers than we'd like to think. And people mess with phone polls especially. Face-to-face, very few people will lie blantantly. This effect is well known, and is why charities and other groups still go door-to-door, most people have a hard time saying "get lost" (or less polite versions) right to someone's face. I'd like to see the same poll done in person.

If asked what year 9/11 happened, some people play stupid, because it seems like a stupid question to most people. Yes, some portion actually won't know and have a hard time with such info. But 30% already? nah, it's just a lot of people playing dumb.

Pollsters know that this happens, and in a lot of cases, lying answers will balance out (political polls where people lie about party kinda' work like this). But not in questions about facts like this.

[Jim McCann]

Paul said....The sheeple don't know the year when this GWOT, Global War on Terror started, they just go along with Fox News and CNN and believe the GWOT exists and they have fallen into line and given up their liberties for a phoney threat.

Paul...considering whats going on in Britain as we speak, would you care to retract this?

[hbo]

Mark Federman and NPS

I, too, am sick of the "9/11" phrase. Too many people suffered on September 11, 2001, and continue to suffer worldwide, and as a sign of respect, I refuse to use a catchy phrase, one that is at home amongst other fluff like "24/7", "Bennifer" and "TomCat", when referring to that day.

I will continue to say or spell that day out in full.

[Bill-Muskoka]

Apparently UBL is using polls himself! Now we have serious competition between terrorist groups! What a world we live in! 'We are the most dangerous!'; 'No, no, we are!' The world olympics of terrorism coming to a location near you soon for sure!

Have the world's terrorist organizations been reduced to the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggert pleading for attention and donations?

Next thing we know UBL will have a weekly or daily evangelical program on-air with an 800 number, or maybe it will be a 666 number, eh?

The parallels are way to hilarious when one thinks about it! Go MSM GO! Yessir, you have potential new advertising clientel!